Stories From Skid Row: Homeless in High School

Jazzmine was told she wouldn’t graduate after her family became homeless. Hope Gardens helped her get her life back.BY UNION RESCUE MISSIONSTORIES FROM SKID ROWEditor's Note: Jazzmine's story is part of the Union Rescue Mission's "Stories From Skid Row" videos available on the organization's website, URM.org.

Hope Gardens

We believe no child should be raised on the dangerous, unforgiving streets of Los Angeles. Yet economic circumstances, illness, and abuse are forcing more mothers and children onto the street. The numbers are tragic. Women and children now make up 40% of all people experiencing homelessness.That’s why we created our Hope Gardens Family Center — an oasis of hope on 71 acres in the foothills of Sylmar, California. This transitional housing campus offers sanctuary to single women and children who are experiencing homelessness. In addition, we offer permanent supportive housing for senior women in our Sequoia Lodge.Hope Gardens helps women transition from homelessness to independence within 12 to 36 months by offering long-term rehabilitation programs, services, and spiritual care.Precious women and children have a safe place to live while they receive counseling, training, encouragement, and the real help they need to escape homelessness forever.

Family Program

The Family Program is designed to help single mothers gain the skills, support, and necessary resources to recover from past trauma — while planning for the future and preparing to maintain permanent housing. They receive the following support and services:

• Onsite therapy
• Life skills education
• Financial and job training
• Educational and social support
• Child care
• Three daily meals
• Access to medical and dental care
• Transportation

Youth Development Program

The Youth Development Program provides a supportive and empowering environment for children who live with their mothers at Hope Gardens. They receive the following support and services:

• Onsite tutoring
• Social and character education
• Mentoring
• Leadership development
• Family therapy
• Planned recreational activities
• Infants and preschool-aged children participate in PEEPS, our onsite childcare and early childhood development program.

Senior Care Program

The Senior Care Program offers affordable permanent housing for elderly ladies who have been devastated by homelessness — allowing them to live with dignity in their twilight years. They receive the following support and services:

• A single-occupancy room with a personal bathroom
• Three meals a day
• 24/7 security
• Transportation
• Medical and legal referrals
• Access to a library, computers, dining area, kitchen, sewing room, living/community room, atrium chapel, patio, and garden grounds

Our goal is to move every precious senior woman, mother, and child off the streets of Skid Row and into the safety of Hope Gardens Family Center.

On the Web

https://urm.org/services/hope-gardens/

Union Rescue Mission's First 5k Walk To Fight Homelessness; WATCH Heartbreaking Skid Row Video

Homelessness is devastating communities nationwide, but nowhere more than in Los Angeles, said organizers of the Union Rescue Mission's inaugural 5k Walk to Fight Homelessness planned for Saturday, June 2."We now have more than 58,000 men, women and children living on Skid Row and throughout Los Angeles County each day," URM said. "For more than 126 years, Union Rescue Mission has provided safe shelter, meals, long-term rehabilitation programs, education, counseling, medical services and encouragement to help our neighbors escape homelessness forever. But with the skyrocketing increase in women and children on the streets, we need your help!"Organizers said, "This is your opportunity to turn your compassion into action. We would like to invite you to join us for our inaugural 5k Walk to Fight Homelessness. Proceeds from the walk will go toward the continuation of our life-saving programs and services to help those experiencing homelessness find their way home."Union Rescue Mission (URM) is one of the largest missions of its kind in America — bringing help and hope to men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in Downtown Los Angeles, the organization states on its website. URM was founded in 1891 by Lyman Stewart, president and founder of Union Oil Company. George A. Hilton served as the first superintendent of the Mission, originally known as the Pacific Gospel Union. During those early days, URM took to the streets in gospel wagons to offer food, clothing, and salvation to the less fortunate. Over the years, URM has continued and expanded its efforts to feed both the body and the soul, helping individuals and families break the cycle of poverty and achieve self-sufficiency.URM states that its mission is to embrace people with the compassion of Christ. The organization's Guiding Principles are to serve God, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and:

• We will serve the whole person in mind, body, and spirit
• We will always serve others with humility
• We will treat all people, who are created in the image of God, with dignity and respect
• We will meet, or exceed, the expectations of those we serve
• We will actively find new ways to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us
• We will be truthful and accountable in our work together
• We will do what we say we will do
• We will intentionally look at new and innovative ways to do our work
• We will share our expertise with others

The walk begins at LA Live and travels through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles.Date: Saturday, June 2nd, 2018Location: LA Live / Staples Arena, Los Angeles, CARegistration Fee: Free!On-Site Walk Registration: 8:00 am PSTWalk Start Time: 9:30 am PSTParking: Structure parking is available in the West Garage(Lot W - Enter on Chick Hearn Ct.) for $15 a carPublic transportation is strongly encouraged.Event Website: https://urmwalk.rallybound.org/For public transportation information, please visit LA Live's Visitor Center:www.lalive.com/visitor-center/public-transportation

Skid Row: Not By Bread Alone

The homeless on LA’s Skid Row are in desperate straits, but giving them more food will not solve their problems

Editor's Note (World Magazine): This article includes disturbing and graphic descriptions of homeless life in LA’s Skid Row.On a warm Friday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, the acrid stench of fresh-spilled blood stung the congealed odors of fossilized urine and unwashed feet. A man whom locals call Turban stabbed three individuals, leaving a half-mile trail of blood and screams until police officers shot at him six times.

BY SOPHIA LEE

Ronald Troy Collins heard the shrieks from the store he manages at the corner where Turban stabbed his first victim—then his second, and then the third (all, including Turban, survived). Collins knows Turban as the guy who sells cigarettes on the streets, relatively harmless until the day he smoked spice, a synthetic marijuana that regularly sends people to emergency rooms. As sirens blared and the police swarmed over in cars, bicycles, and helicopters, Collins prayed, “Oh Lord, help him, help them, help us.”Such savagery doesn’t surprise Collins, who calls it “another normal-day event in Skid Row.” It only made news because the police shot a man. As someone who’s lived homeless sporadically for 35 years and is still homeless, the 50-year-old Collins has witnessed a multitude of base acts in Skid Row: that deranged, reeking man with an unzipped fly who harasses women with his exposed crotch; drug sale transactions right outside of drug-rehab facilities; spontaneous combustions of shrill arguments and brutal fistfights; public urination and defecation; sex between men and men, women and women, even some bestiality. “There are no rules or regulations down here, nothing! A modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, pretty much.”I’ve also heard locals refer to this 11,000-resident territory as “Devil’s Den,” “man-made hell,” and “where people go to die.” If LA is the homeless capital of America (see “Homeless on the streets of LA,” April 1) , Skid Row serves as its junkyard, collecting the rusting heap of issues that encompass the city’s homelessness crisis.... READ FULL STORY AT WORLD MAGAZINEPhoto: Edward PadgettLA Pastors’ Bottom Line: We Want to Help the City That We Live In